Animation creation and development company Nada Anime is a young animation studio which has been quietly but steadily making a name for itself in the Greater China area.
The 16-member team at Nada Anime may not be particularly big for an animation company, but since setting up shop in 2009 it hasn’t shied away from big projects. The Taipei-based studio recently completed a 90-minute animated feature Melody (also known as Jiao zhi shang de xing guang), which was later adapted into a bestselling Mandarin language novel. The 2D animated film features music by renowned composer Chien Yao, award-winning sound designer Tu Du-chih, and the voice talent of Berlinale winner Sinje Lee.
The animation studio was also involved in creating the multiplatform ARPG (action role-playing game) Project-F Evolution Revolution. “We teamed up with game developers Softstar Entertainment and Keystone Games Studio to co-produce an animated series, web game and e-comics,” recalls Nada Anime producer Joe Teng.
This drive for product development beyond animation content makes Nada Anime unique among smaller studios, and its home base in Taiwan, a growing digital gaming market, gives it unique opportunities to expand beyond traditional animation content. “We’re more like an animation developer. Even in the early stages of developing an animation project we consider the merchandising and licensing options,” says Teng, and that means looking beyond the usual scope of an animation studio’s content development. One of the projects in Nada Anime’s pipeline involves working with a live-action drama team. “The original live-action story is very good comedy, and we’re trying to transform that into animation,” Teng explains. He believes the animated format will allow Nada Anime to bring the story further from its live-action limitations. “Good content is always the key, but it’s also important for that content to integrate with different genres of entertainment,” Teng says. “Audience preferences change very quickly.”
Nada Anime is currently working on the prototype of Naraka Adventure, which won the Superpitch Children/ Preschool category at the Asian Television Awards’ Superpitch last December.
Naraka Adventure follows the unexpected journey of three little girls into a magical world, where they each learn to use the special abilities they’ve acquired in this wonderland. The concept behind Naraka Adventure was inspired by an ancient tale of the underworld. “We extract two important elements from the story; one is the idea of exotic world adventure and the other is encouragement of being good,” says Teng. “By using the magic, they can explore the unknown world composing of distinctive mainlands such as ice land, iron-tree land, hot-spring land and etc. The components of the different mainlands are the ideas from the ancient story. We apply these elements to create the wonderland. We’d like to create a world that will be able to fulfill girls’ curiosity and beyond imagination.”
Nada Anime hopes the adventures of the three girls will encourage kids to be helpful and do good things. “For example, in the story about the Iron-Tree Land, people are suffering due to shortage of food and water. They’ve heard of a wonderful place with a waterfall across the desert, but no one dares to venture into the desert alone, yet they don’t trust anyone to cross the desert with them,” Teng explains. “The mission for the three girls is to figure out how to cross the desert. They accomplish this by helping the people trust each other to get water and food, and through this the people in Iron-Tree Land learn that there is strength in unity.”
“Superpitch was a really great experience. It provided a very direct way to get feedback from those important directors and producers of international channels for kid’s programming,” Teng shares. “While we’ve had a good relationship with partners in the Greater China area, it’s good to communicate with international companies and understand what they really care about. Participating in Superpitch provides us good connection with these international companies,” he adds.
